Year 11 Diploma - English

Year 11 Diploma - English

Ko taku reo ohooho, ko taku reo taku mapihi mauria  |  My language is my awakening, my language is the window to my soul

English is the study, use and enjoyment of the English language and its literature. The aim of the Year 11 English course is to enrich students’ experience of the English language by engaging with text based activities. In doing so, students will become increasingly skilled and sophisticated readers and writers, speakers and listeners, presenters and viewers.

The Year 11 English course also aims to provide a bridge into Year 12 and Year 13 English courses, so that by the end of the year, all Year 11 students will be confident in meeting the exciting challenges those courses offer. According to Malorie Blackman, author of the Noughts and Crosses series, “Reading is an exercise in empathy, an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.”This is precisely why we teach literature in schools. Other than the obvious linguistic purpose of being able to clearly write and articulate thoughts in a clear and concise manner, learning about literature teaches students what it is like to be a human in another context, think critically and draw deeper meanings from words. To read literature is to understand power, oppression, equality, freedom and tyranny.

Student Learning Outcomes:

• Use critical processes to understand and infer meaning and to recognise how writers position an audience for purpose.
• Students will learn how to look beyond the texts they study in order to question perspectives and representations.
• Students will develop their ability to make meaning of written, visual and oral language with control. They will make deliberate choices in the crafting and editing of visual, oral, and written texts.
• Students will perform a clearly structured speech using a range of devices.